Video: Managing color groups

When you start to add more and more color swatches to your document, you may find it difficult to actually find those color swatches because things get a little bit messy here in the Swatches panel. Now you can actually organize the swatches themselves by just clicking-and-dragging and then to move them around, but that's still a tedious process. Even more so, as you start to get out more colors, you can't control how they wrap around and go to the next line. So one of the nice things about the Swatches panel itself is that you do have the ability to organize your swatches in something called color groups. In fact, whenever you create a new document, I'll just create a new print document, for example, right here. You will notice that inside of that particular file, your document already has many swatches.

Covering a wide range of topics, from advanced masking to chart creation, Illustrator CS4 Beyond the Basics reveals a whole new level of power, creativity, and efficiency with Illustrator. Instructor Mordy Golding explores how to work with Live Paint groups, get the most out of the Live Trace feature, and take advantage of Illustrator’s wide range of effects. He also discusses advanced transformation techniques, powerful 3D functionality, and important color concepts. Exercise files accompany the course.

Managing color groups

When you start to add more and more color swatches to your document, you mayfind it difficult to actually find those color swatches because things get alittle bit messy here in the Swatches panel.Now you can actually organize the swatches themselves by justclicking-and-dragging and then to move them around, but that's still a tediousprocess. Even more so, as you start to get out more colors, you can't controlhow they wrap around and go to the next line.So one of the nice things about the Swatches panel itself is that you do havethe ability to organize your swatches in something called color groups. Infact, whenever you create a new document, I'll just create a new printdocument, for example, right here. You will notice that inside of thatparticular file, your document already has many swatches.

Now these are just lose swatches, kind of, lying around in your Swatches panel.However, you can notice over here, you have like these folders and there arecertain colors that exist only inside of that folder. So this is what we referto as a color group. You could easily create your own color groups.So let's go back to the other document right here and let's say I want tocreate my own colors here. I can simply go over here and click on this littlefolder icon with the plus sign called New Color Group. In doing so, I can giveit a name. So let's call this one, flowers. Click OK.If I want to now add colors to that particular group, I can hold down my Shiftkey here to actually select different colors or I can hold down the Command keyor Ctrl key on Windows to actually select non-contiguous colors and then dragthose into that folder. Now I have added a color to that group. If you want toremove colors from a group, you can simply click on a color and drag it out of the group.

As we learn more and more about working with color inside of Illustrator, we'll see that there are certain functions that take advantage of colors that livewithin groups. In fact, the Illustrator ships with many different swatchlibraries that you can use. Simply go down over here where it says SwatchLibraries menu and choose something here, for example, called Foods and let's open up Beverages.You will notice that all these colors here that exists are all within groups.So if you want to add, for example, Martini, and who wouldn't, you want to takethis particular folder and click on it and drag it into your Swatches panel tobring that entire group now into your Swatches panel to your document.

Now there are additional ways of creating color groups as well. Let me go aheadand close this panel here. Let's say I actually apply some colors to mydocument but you know something, maybe I'm not careful about creating swatchesfor each of these colors.What I'm about to show you right now is actually pretty useful for times whenyou are getting files from other people. Maybe they just created colors butwithout actually creating swatches for them which makes it difficult for you asa designer to continue to make modifications or use the colors that they havealready applied in the document.So what you can do is use your regular Selection tool to select some artwork.For example, I'll select these pieces of artwork right here and because I haveartwork selected, I'll now see a different behavior with this same icon over here, the folder icon with the plus sign. Now instead of creating a new color group, which would be blank because I have artwork selected, I get a dialog boxwhich allows me to create a color group based on a selected artwork.

I also have a helpful button here that will allow me to automatically convertall my process swatches to global swatches in the process. I'll call this onefun flowers and click OK. Now you can see that Illustrator automatically createa global colors for me right here in a new group.

Learn by watching, listening, and doing, Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along Premium memberships include access to all exercise files in the library.

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Learn by watching, listening, and doing! Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along. Exercise files are available with all Premium memberships.
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